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Full-body imaging scanners are being installed this week at security checkpoints at Orlando International Airport, meaning some passengers soon will walk through the see-through-clothing machines instead of metal detectors to get on a plane.

Transportation Security Administration Administrator John S. Pistole said Tuesday in Orlando that the machines will be installed here this week, part of the agency's effort to get them into all major airports by the end of the year. So far, he said, 317 body scanners are in use in 65 airports.

Pistole wants 500 body scanners in place nationally by the end of this year, and 1,000 by the end of next year.

"We believe this advanced body imaging technology is the best technology available today," Pistole said.

The TSA would not say when officers would start using the Orlando machines. Depending on how many machines are installed and the number of lanes open, passengers likely will be randomly selected to pass through them.

Imaging scanners once were controversial, assailed by personal privacy critics because they provide TSA officers with outlines of nude bodies. The machines being installed in Orlando use "backscatter" technology – emitting low levels of x-rays – to see through clothing.

Passengers who object may skip the scanners, but they will be subject to other forms of inspection.

The level of criticism fell after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab of Nigeria hid plastic explosives in his underwear and was able to get onto Northwest Flight 253 bound from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day. He failed to detonate his bomb, which could have killed 300 people.

Within days of that incident, federal officials said they were stepping up installation of the machines in American airports. They $150,000 units are being paid for with federal stimulus money.